Maintenance programme, airworthiness directives and modifications

The maintenance programme

From the FlyPack CAMO manual

Aircraft → the aircraft → Programme.

The list of tasks and their intervals. Everything in Planning is computed from it, so a task that is not here is a task that will never come due.

The buttons

Add task

A task may carry more than one interval; it is driven by whichever runs out first. It refuses one with none:

"A scheduled task needs an interval — hours, cycles, landings or months. Without one it never becomes due."

The code matters beyond identification: a code beginning AD: marks the task as required by an airworthiness directive, which is what makes its line on an estimate MANDATORY.

Edit on a row corrects a task. Delete takes it off the programme — softly, because compliance records point at it and a task that was required for three years is part of the aircraft's history. A task derived from a directive cannot be deleted at all:

"This task comes from an airworthiness directive. It leaves the programme when the directive is complied with by a terminating action, not by being deleted."

Build from the manuals

Opens /fleet/:id/amp. Upload the maintenance manuals, tick the ones to read, and the reading proposes tasks with the words each was taken from and the page they are on.

Then it is reviewed, task by task. Each row shows the quoted text and a citation that opens the manual at that page. Three states:

• green — accepted;
• amber — still to decide;
• grey — a pointer at another manual, which is not work and cannot be ticked.

Buttons: Accept all that apply, Reject all, Read other manuals, Approve as a programme, Abandon the reading, Clear it and start again.

The review exists because a rubber-stamped programme is worse than no feature at all: it looks approved. The quoted words and the page reference are there so a task can be checked in two seconds, because a reviewer who cannot check quickly will accept.

Set the last scheduled inspection first. What is already due is judged from that date and those hours, so a programme read in against a blank last inspection produces a due list that is wrong from the start. It is on the aircraft's Edit form, above Correct the record.

Which hours read which way

On this tab both kinds sit in the same row, so it is worth being plain:

• Interval and its tolerance — 100.0 h (±10.0 h) — stay decimal always. They are quoted from the manual, and 100:00 h misquotes it.
• Last done, Next due and Margin are the aircraft's own clock and follow the organisation's setting.

The same split holds in Build from the manuals: the intervals it reads out of a document are quoted as the document writes them, while the counters it judges them against — "the aircraft is at 3,411:54 h" — are written your way. See How hours are written.

Revise

Revise asks for the new revision, the basis it is approved or declared under, the effective from date, and why it is being revised.

A revision supersedes the one before it rather than editing it. "That revision has already been superseded" is the refusal when two people revise at once.

The revision, its basis, its effective date and when it is next due for review are shown on the aircraft's overview.

The bases

Which are offered depends on the aircraft's regime:

A declared programme records who declared it and when; an approved one records the authority. That distinction is the whole difference between ML.A.302 (b)(1) and (b)(2), and it is what a review asks for first.

Record review

Record review records that the programme was reviewed: the date it was reviewed on, who by, and any findings. ML.A.302(c) makes the review a continuing obligation rather than an event, and the next one due is shown on the aircraft's overview.

It refuses a review dated in the future: "A review cannot be recorded in the future."

Airworthiness directives and service bulletins

From the FlyPack CAMO manual

Aircraft → the aircraft → AD & SB.

The buttons on the tab

Check online

Matches on the aircraft's type, and on its variant — the build standard within the type, "B23-915 IFR" on a Bristell B23. Manufacturers key their service bulletins on the variant, not the type certificate, so two aeroplanes on one certificate can have different applicable bulletins. That is why the variant is a field on the aircraft and not on the type.

It also matches on modifications embodied, because an AD often applies only to aircraft carrying a particular modification — which is why a modification needs its reference: "A modification needs its reference — it is what an AD rule matches on."

What it proposes is reviewed and accepted or rejected. Nothing is applied to the aircraft on the strength of a search.

Record a directive

The kind changes what recording it commits you to, and the dialog says so as you pick: an airworthiness directive is mandatory, a service bulletin is not unless an AD makes it so, an airworthiness limitation goes into the programme.

A recurring one is refused without its interval:

"A recurring directive needs its repeat interval — hours or months. Without one it never comes due again."

Reference, title, the authority that issued it, the effective date, and how it comes due.

A recurring directive needs its repeat interval:

"A recurring directive needs its repeat interval — hours or months. Without one it never comes due again."

That is the whole reason the field is mandatory. A recurring AD with no interval is not an AD with no recurrence; it is one that will be complied with once and never reported again.

Record compliance

Terminating action is the box that ends the recurrence. Tick it only when the directive says the action terminates the requirement; leaving it unticked on a terminating action leaves a repeat forecast that will never be satisfied, and ticking it on a repetitive one silently stops the aircraft being checked again.

Recording compliance does two things at once:

1. writes the compliance record — the evidence;
2. resets the AD-derived programme task, which is what the due list and the AD status column actually read.

Both are written in the same place so the records check and the sign-off path cannot drift apart.

Directives on a work pack

A directive added to a work pack is signed off there, and signing it off records compliance exactly as above — you do not record it twice. On the estimate, its line is tagged MANDATORY, along with any task whose code begins AD: and any grounding defect.

Modifications, repairs and standard changes

From the FlyPack CAMO manual

Aircraft → the aircraft → Modifications.

Everything embodied on the aircraft that is not the aircraft as it left the factory: STCs, minor and major modifications, repairs, and standard changes under CS-STAN.

Why the reference is mandatory

"A modification needs its reference — it is what an AD rule matches on."

An airworthiness directive frequently applies only to aircraft carrying a particular modification. The directive check reads these references, so a modification recorded without one is a modification the AD check cannot see.

Record one

Record one, on the Modifications tab. Every field, in the order it is asked:

The approval bases

EASA STC · FAA STC · EASA major change approval · EASA minor change approval · FAA Form 337 · DOA-approved data · Structural repair manual · Manufacturer's service bulletin · Other approved data.

Other approved data is honest — some repairs go on under a letter from the design organisation — but it cannot be verified from the record alone, so the airworthiness review reports it rather than accepting it silently.

The three checkboxes that produce findings

AFM supplement, ICA amended and Affects weight and balance are not paperwork for its own sake. Each is a gap ML.A.903 looks for, and the airworthiness review lists them by name — "no AFM supplement", "ICA not amended", "no weighing after a change affecting weight and balance" — as things for the reviewer to judge rather than as blockers.

It refuses:

• "Nothing can have been embodied in the future."
• "The approval is dated after the work. Check the dates: data has to be approved before it is embodied." — the sequence is the point. Approved data precedes the work; the other order is not a paperwork slip, it is unapproved work.
• "It cannot have come off before it went on."

Removing one

Removed records that a modification has been taken off, with a reason:

"Say why it is being taken off — the record is what the next review reads."

It is not deleted. What was fitted, when, and why it came off is the aircraft's history.

Standard changes

CS-STAN standard changes are held against a specification, and eligibility is checked against the aircraft before one can be recorded — a standard change is only standard for the aircraft it applies to.

A standard change signed off on a work pack is embodied automatically when the pack is released, and linked to the certificate as its evidence. This is deliberate: recording it separately meant the link was filled in by hand or, far more often, not at all — and "no release to service" was then the first thing the airworthiness review reported against a modification that had in fact been properly released.

A standard change deferred off a pack was not embodied, and is not recorded as such.